The world that wasn't there
Subtitle: pre-Columbian art from the Ligabue Collection
By: catalogue edited by Adriano Favaro
Contributors: Museo archeologico di Firenze
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 361
ISBN-13: 9788874397013
Subjects: Art collections; Indians; Indian art; Exhibitions; Antiquities
Other titles: Pre-Columbian art in the Ligabue Collection
Description: "One of the first people in Europe to consider the gifts which the Aztec ruler Montezuma gave to Hérnan Cortés as works of art was Albrecht Dürer: ‘Nothing I have yet seen has given me such joy as the objects brought to the king from the new gold countries […] Some pieces display an extraordinary skill; I have been astonished by the ingenuity of the inhabitants of those far distant lands’, he wrote. It was 1520 and those works had been sent to Brussels. The five centuries that have passed since the beauty of these objects was first noticed seem not to have been enough for the ancient cultures of Latin America to be fully understood. This catalogue of pre-Columbian art is a fresh attempt to examine and come to terms with artworks produced by a section of mankind that came to the attention of Europeans only after the voyages of Columbus and other explorers. It illustrates the collection of pre-Columbian art of Giancarlo and Inti Ligabue, one of the few collections of its kind in Italian hands: over 150 pieces from Mesoamerica and South America, an extraordinary corpus of objects that give testament to the excellence achieved by ancient artists. But it also tells the story of certain rare objects which belonged to the Medici Collection, one of Europe’s greatest treasures. Among these are two atlatls, spear-throwers covered in gold-leaf from the Aztec or Mixtec cultures, a Taíno necklace dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and a Teotihuacan stone mask. These objects are accompanied by pieces from private European collections and a number of significant artworks from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris."--

"The World That Wasn’t There tells the story of what became known to the West only after the voyages of Columbus and other European explorers: the beautiful and superbly crafted art of North and South America. From the best-known and most ancient civilizations— such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec—to the spectacular vestiges of Teotihuacan, Veracruz, and Nayarit, from the ceramic Venuses of Valdivia, Ecuador, to the gold objects of Tairona, the ceramics of the Incas, and the fabrics and pots of the Nazca region, it is all here, in a stunning book presenting one of the most important private collections of pre-Columbian art in the world. This publication of treasures from the Ligabue Collection, assembled by the Italian palaeontologist and archaeological and anthropo­logical scholar Giancarlo Ligabue (1931–2015), provides an unprecedented opportunity for collectors, scholars, and all those interested in pre-Columbian art."--
Notes: Subtitle on cover: Pre-Columbian art in the Ligabue Collection.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence, Italy, September 19, 2015-March 6, 2016.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 358-361).
Table of contents: title: The world that wasn't there / André Delpuech; title: Introduction to Mesoamerica / Christine Philips; title: The Olmec civilisation / Claude-François Baudez; title: Preclassic villages, Las Bacas and Tlatilco, Olmec period / Christine Philips; title: The Guerrero cultures / Christine Philips; title: The Occidente / Nicolas Latsanopoulos; title: Teotihuacan, city of the gods / Nathalie Ragot; title: The Zapotec culture / Nathalie Ragot; title: The gulf coast in the Classic period / Sylvie Paperstraete; title: The ceremonial outfit of the Mesoamerican ballplayers / Ted J.J. Leyenaar; title: Unity and diversity in Maya civilisation / Claude-François Baudez; title: Maya pottery / Jean-Michel Hoppan; title: The Aztecs and Postclassic cultures / Sylvie Peperstraete; title: Writing systems in precolonial America / Davide Domenici; title: The civilisation of Central and South America / Claudio Cavatrunci, Mario Polia; title: The narrow lands : Costa Rica and Panama / Claudio Cavatrunci; title: Pre-Columbian art in Colombia and Ecuador / Jean-François Bouchard; title: The Inca area and its cultural stages / Federico Kauffmann Doig; title: North America : the Artic area / Patrick Plumet; title: The first globalisation / Adriano Favaro.